


One Bullet

by TheRedPoet



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 07:55:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6974380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRedPoet/pseuds/TheRedPoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Red Court raid leaves an injured Susan stranded on the streets with her Hunger driving her mad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Bullet

**Author's Note:**

> Written ages ago and finished only recently. It's really short and I originally wasn't going to post it here. Then I figured, why not? ^^

Life was short, harsh and unfair. Susan had thought she’d known both things as a reporter for the Midwestern Arcane. She'd done her best to fix things, as best she could and the only way she knew. Then, when Bianca and her creatures had turned her, she thought she’d learned how painful life could be. But it hadn’t been until she’d moved into the heartland of the Red Court and seen the atrocities they were perpetrating that she’d learned what true suffering was.

How naïve she’d been. How arrogant.

Susan stumbled out of the door of the burning safe-house, one hand pressed against her stomach where a bullet had torn through her. She wasn’t sure how bad it was yet and there was no time to stop and check.

The vampires would've been able to track the blood, but the sunlight would keep them at bay long enough for it to be rendered useless. Unless people with them and they usually did.

Blood-loss and sleep deprivation ganged up on her, turning her vision blurry and double. With shaking hands, she ejected the clip of her gun. Empty. There was one bullet in the chamber and that was all she had left. It would have to do.

The early morning sun would’ve been pleasant under normal circumstances, but she was in no position to enjoy it. She stuck the gun into the holster under her arm, checked over her shoulder to see if she’d been followed and then when she was reasonably certain that wasn’t the case, she zipped up her jacket over the stomach wound and walked out onto the busy little street.

Fifteen minutes later, she was reasonably sure that she hadn’t been followed and that the wound wasn’t going to kill her if she got medical attention. That wasn’t her biggest concern, though. The hunger clawed at her mind, demanding hot blood to slake her thirst and to help heal the wound that it currently hadn’t the energy to deal with.

She needed to get to somewhere quiet where she could think. Somewhere where the insistent ache in her teeth - no, her fangs - and the pounding Need would be less prevalent.

Susan found herself in the shadow of a small underpass, sitting curled up with her back against rough concrete on the ground, shaking all over. She tried to shut down her senses, focus on the here and now, and failing.  
She could smell the sweet scent from a nearby bakery that none of the actual products within ever actually seemed to replicate. There was the dirt, the filth, the decay of the large city, traffic roaring by a few blocks away... And people. She could hear their pounding heartbeats - or was it her own? - from all around her.

The sound that finally made her look up and out into the sunlight, though, was laughter. Children laughing, enjoying a little playground set in the park that had been nestled in between buildings and streets. The monster Bianca had forced upon her that night, the one she'd held at bay for so long, made her rise to her feet.

It would be so easy, it whispered to her, to lure one of them aside and slake her bloodlust. After all, what was one life to all the ones she had saved? Her legs wouldn't obey her and she moved out of the shadows one slow, painful step at a time. Her arms were still cooperating, though, and she feebly scratched and broke nails against the concrete in an attempt to stop herself.

Her eyes tracked to the child closest, building a little castle in the sandbox. Her hair was dark and long, almost like... Maggie's. Her legs may not obey her, but her hands still did. She seized the gun.

One bullet. It would do.


End file.
